Create a "big" RAID0 like storage pool

[reebzor]

I have a bunch of (4) external harddrives connected to my Snow Leopard Server that I use for backing stuff up with CCC. They are 3TB, 2TB, 2TB and 1TB. I'm getting sick of seeing all these little boxes and running out of outlets to plug them into. I am considering buying just a standard, no frills, JBOD enclosure to throw them all in. Traditional RAID is not an option because the drives are all different sizes and redundancy is not necessary as the purpose is just to backup a RAID5 array.

Now my understanding is that they will still all mount as 4 separate drives, which is still acceptable, but I would prefer to have the drives mount as a single 8TB volume. I like how I could potentially do this with ZFS, but 1) I'm not sure how to do this in OS X and 2) AFAIK RAIDZ will have an overhead for redundancy which I do not need.

So does anyone know how I can create a big disk pool in OS X without using RAID?

 

[Mal]

You want what's called a Concatenated Disk Set. You can do that from Disk Utility. Just select one of the drives, go to the RAID tab, and select Concatenated Disk Set from the drop-down for RAID type. Drag your disks into the bottom portion of the window, and let it wipe them and create the RAID. You can actually do that with them daisy-chained together, although a RAID enclosure offers advantages in power and space, not to mention clutter.

jW